News & events

A second life for TARM | 21/06/2017

One of JET's most recognisable components is set for a new lease of life supporting studies for the first fusion power plants.

At the end of May, the Telescopic Articulated Remote Mast (TARM), a massive remote handling system that has been based at JET for over 30 years, was moved across the Culham site to the new RACE centre.

The TARM had reached the end of its operational days at JET after being used as a platform for remote handling training and task development. Rather than leaving this interesting and dexterous piece of engineering (with 38 degrees of freedom) unused, it will be brought into the 21st century at RACE, with new hardware and electronics that are compatible with the centre's innovative control systems. There it will form a central part of RACE's work on remote handling systems for the DEMO prototype fusion power plant, as well as other projects.

Preparations for moving the seven-metre long mast took five months and the work paid off with a flawless operation, as you can see in the video above.

Jonathan Keep, lead engineer for the TARM project, commented: “This marks the end of the first stage of an exciting project that will provide RACE with a unique large-scale remote maintenance tool. TARM will be initially configured to support DEMO remote maintenance studies, but its scale and versatility offers RACE a host of opportunities for future knowledge and technology development."